"You're not dating Emily F. anymore?" "No, she loved anagrams too much. I'd have to rearrange 'my life' for her." ("Yeah, I'd have mixed feelings about that.")
@Mike You know she had two boyfriends at once? Both were called Felix! Can you imagine being in love with two Felixes? Seems like a confused sexlife to me. Last I heard, she got Moe and Esther together and made a threesome!
@Mike "Was it her obsession with Elvis?" "Yeah, she still thinks he 'lives.'” (It's a jumbled mess)
@Mike If you get back together and have kids, and they have kids, she will be a granma.
At first I thought the theme was annoying and esoteric beyond belief. I worked primarily through crosses, and was doing ok until the SE corner. Then the anagrammatic nature of the themed clues became clear, the revealer made sense and my frustration vanished. I stand in awe of the linguistic legerdemain that went into this one. And to top it off, the clue for MADEMAN was top notch. For reasons I won’t get into, I was unable to comment on yesterday’s puzzle, but suffice it to say GUMMO gave me fits.
@Marshall Walthew I had a very similar experience (also with Gummo). Today's solve was quite a ride, from "What the actual F" to "Ooh, that's clever!". Fist bump? 🤜🏽🤛🏽
@Marshall Walthew You described exactly the experience I try for in a tricky puzzle - a bit of frustration to start, and then it clicks into place when you "get" the theme. It's a tricky target to hit, so I'm really glad to hear it worked for you.
I saw an interview with Josh Gad, who showed Spaceballs to his daughter. She then asked to watch "Spaceballs 2" because Mel Brooks refers to it in the movie. Josh explained to her that there was actually no Spaceballs 2. That night, he dreamed the whole plot of Spaceballs 2, and then proceeded to call up Mel Brooks to pitch the movie. Whereby Mel said "Josh, I've been waiting 35 years for this phone call!". So they're making the movie. I don't even remember Spaceballs but I saw that clip on TikTok today (it was from an interview with Seth Meyer) and I thought it was funny so I had to share. P.s. I didn’t even notice the anagrams which is good because I am bad at them.
Does anyone else ever scroll to the Tricky Clues section in search for help, only to find all the answers you thought were gimmes? I need an Easy Clue section it seems!
@Sue Happens often!! Makes me laugh and then I relish at how far I’ve come
@Sue Great minds think alike -- especially if named Sue! I usually know the Tricky Clues, but get stuck on totally different ones. Thank goodness for the answer key!
Of all the.... The likes of.... Who in the... What the... How did.... Is this a.... In other words, SHEESH and YOWZA (you can't make me spell it that way!) and congratulations. I can hear the shrieks from here. How did I even.... In what world... Except for the fact that THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS "OKRAS" this was the most amazing, baffling, clever, intriguing, FUN puzzle evah! More, please!
I still get embarrassed thinking about the time I dressed in a French maid's outfit when I thought I was interviewing to be a maid man.
@ad absurdum So, did the family accept you?
@Andrzej Surprisingly they made me an offer I couldn't refuse.
@ad absurdum Did you get your own bedroom, or did you have to sleep with the fishes?
TIL that Jonathan Swift invented the name Vanessa. According to the Internets, here's the story: "The writer Jonathan Swift invented the name Vanessa as a pseudonym for his friend Esther Vanhomrigh. He created the name by combining the first part of her surname, "Van," with an affectionate diminutive of her first name, "Essa". The name first appeared in his 1726 poem, "Cadenus and Vanessa," which chronicled their relationship."
Amusingly, "Cadenus" is an anagram of "decanus" the Latin word for "DEAN" [see 7-Down], which was Swift's position at St. Patrick's at the time.
This was WAY too easy. Of course, I’m fluent in Flemish, Croatian and Latvian.
No surprise that NYT still doesn’t understand that “okras” isn’t a thing people say.
@Chet I always groan at dubious pluralizations like that (another groaner in today’s grid being “SLRS”)…but at the same time, surely *you* can understand that being “a thing people say” isn’t, and shouldn’t be, a requirement for inclusion in a crossword puzzle.
@Chet How about we change the cluing from plural: The Cajun chef yelled "The OKRA'S done frying!"
@Chet Is there more than one type of okra? The internet says "yes". How many okras are there?
Axiom #7 of crosswords: When faced with a theme you haven’t yet twigged to, it’s probably anagrams. My twisted tongue inspired me to look these up: Raincoat in Latvian: lietusmētelis Himself in Croatian: sebe Valiant in Flemish: heldhaftig Quiz next week.
@Cat Lady Margaret Will there be math?
Sam so far, in his three NYT puzzles has come up with themes where letters and words are re-arranged. His last puzzle (7/1/25) featured parenthetical words within parenthetical words, and his first (6/1/25) was, like today’s, based on anagrams, where, i.e., CHANGE OF HEART was clued [EARTH]. I don’t know if re-arranging will be his wordplay niche, but I’m all for it! The theme today is elegant, and high props to Sam for being the first to come up with it. The reveal has “Hah!”-worthy wordplay punch. Thus, one terrific theme. My favorite serendipity in the grid today is the answer with a meta feel: MADE MAN, which simply anagrams to MAN MADE, which is what this puzzle is! Smooth, fun, original, and elegant – mwah! Thank you, Sam!
@Lewis Thank you, Lewis! I'm so glad you enjoyed it (and the other two). Anagrams (and other types of word deconstructing) are definitely my forte, so the MADE MAN -> MAN MADE observation is right up my alley. Phrases like that are great idea for a theme, and I believe there was a puzzle just like that a while back.
While anagrams can be a gimme for a thursday, I felt today’s had enough granola to make me work for the answers. Using languages that I would not be gimmes for me made this worth it. Fun fact that people don’t know about Saint Paul, MN, we have over 100 languages spoken here. Take that, NYC.
@Red Carpet Since you've thrown down the gauntlet, according to various internet sources (Wikipedia, World Atlas) there are over 800 languages spoken in the NYC metro area.
@Red Carpet On behalf of Toronto, I say: "Hold my beer." There are a number of large apartment blocks near the airport on a street called Dixon. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of refugees from the Horn of Africa have arrived at the Toronto airport knowing no English beyond "refugee" and "Dixon". And that's just one tiny example. We have diasporas for every country in the world, including refugees from all sides of every conflict you've ever heard and plenty you never did. So, St Paul, we see you your 100 and raise you at least 75 (at last count.)
@SBK When researching in Wikipedia, a book called Language City is in the footnotes of the NYC entry. Sounded interesting so I checked the ebook out of the Brookly Public Library.
This thread is like: "I see your Schwartz is as big as mine" Which is very apt given 1A.
I hate it when one of my favorite pastimes gets spoiled by poor choices people make. But enough about somebody skating to Coldplay at a recent ISU Grand Prix event. I'm rarely impressed by the construction of a puzzle, but this came close. Finding words the English translations of which were anagrams of the name of the original language - and then incorporating it all into a mostly enjoyable grid - can't have been easy. Well done. That being said, I was slightly put off by the themed non-English words being complete enigmas. Well, mostly, anyway. The Croatian "kabanica" sounds much like an old-fashioned Polish word for a coat - "kabat", which actually helped me solve one of today's anagrams. The etymology of the Polish word is not clear (there are at least two theories), but it being so similar to Croatian can't be pure coincidence, can it? For more language trivia: English has the word "turncoat". Well, in Polish the verb "przekabacić" (literally, turn a coat) means to cause somebody to go turncoat. Kabaty also used to be a village that now is a sub-division of my Warsaw district of Ursynów. The village was probably named after its one-time owners, the Kabat family, who in turn somehow were named for a military coat. I solved the puzzle in Wednesday time but it did not feel easy, at all. I thought the difficulty was OK for this time in the week. And now for something completely different. Lucek the puppy sporting my wife's sweater: <a href="https://imgur.com/a/oXovIS3" target="_blank">https://imgur.com/a/oXovIS3</a>
@Andrzej “Finding words the English translations of which were anagrams of the name of the original language” - I figure the process was the opposite: find language names that have anagrams (programmatically), then translate those anagrams into those languages (straightforward)…
@rajeevfromca Possibly (and I did think some software must have been used but my post was already at its 1500 character limit so I did not comment on it), but you seem to be ignoring the element of incorporating the results into a fine, enjoyable grid. Coming up with a trick is one challenge, but making it part of a puzzle that works as a whole is another, and surely a bigger one.
@Andrzej Inquiring minds want to know: Did Coldplay’s music destroy your enjoyment of a figure skating competition or was it the other way around?
@Eric Hougland For some reason you can't explain? 😉
@Andrzej Just dropped in for the puppy pic. Wasn't disappointed.
@Eric Hougland I suspected it was intentional. And now it's in my head again. It got me looking into the Joe Satriani lawsuit. Apparently the chord progression is so catchy that people have been writing it for centuries!
Flemish? This was hard for those of us who only understand Walloonish.
I’ve never looked this up before, but another poster’s musing prompted me to. Was SHEA Irish? Nope. Shea comes from ‘si’, the word for ‘shea tree’ in Bambara, the most widely spoken of the official languages of Mali. Though Mali, like other parts of West Africa, was under French colonial rule until the 20th c., ‘shea’ comes to us via the travel literature of one Mungo Park, a Scottish explorer, who had managed to get to Mali before the French. The OED attests it first in his book titled ‘Travels in the interior of Africa, in the years 1795, 1796, & 1797:’ “In clearing wood land for cultivation, every tree is cut down but the Shea.” What’s interesting is that English hadn’t pick up the already existing then French word for ‘shea’—‘karité’—before Park went traipsing through what is Mali today. By the time Park got to Mali, the French had been sitting in West Africa for some time (though not in Mali), and in the process they had imported ‘karité’ from Wolof, the language spoken today in Senegal, Gambia, and Mauritania. In Wolof shea is called ‘kaarite,’ which, acc. to Spanish Wikipedia, means ‘pan de mono’ or ‘monkey bread.’ (@Andrzej, this is for you: No relation between Fr. karité and Sp. carite (mackerel) or Med. Lat. karitās (charity) or Anc. Greek χάριτα—khárita (grace). Sometimes a false cognate is just a false cognate is monkey bread [smile]). Well, I suppose ‘shea’ does roll off the tongue more easily than [gargles in preparation] ‘karité.’
@Sam Lyons To me, as a Polish speaker, karité rolls of the tongue beautifully ❤️ I love words with a resounding, meaty"r" in the middle. It was one of the reasons Jorge's name was what it was.
im becoming increasingly fond of puzzlers who create layers within layers, mostly to amuse themselves, which are entirely unnecessary for solving the puzzle. had the anagrammatic definitions based on the language names not been anagrams at all, the puzzle would have been just as zippy and clever. as ive noted before, for me its an amuse-bouche reminiscent of the artists who included (and, i suppose, still include) obscure personal fillips in their canvases primarily for their own pleasure. except here, in my dim-witted case, the morsel usually delights after the meal rather than before.
A bit meh for me I’m afraid. I always say anagram puzzles need a raisin d’etre and I’m not sure this one has one. Sure, you found some languages you can anagram—good for you. (And you lose points for admitting to using a computer program instead of the old fashioned scrabble tiles). They will always be symmetrical since they are anagrams, and there will always be a translation so it’s not like you have to be too clever about it. Points for all the hoops you had to jump through to fit them into the grid (including finding a pair that cross with TONGUETWISTER) and that was an appropriate enough revealer. But it’s not twisty or challenging enough for a Thursday (the anagrams actually make it easier) so maybe if this were a Tuesday or Wednesday I would have appreciated it more. I did like the SHEESH and YOWZAH placement and TIL that Swift invented the name VANESSA, so thanks for that. And an extra point for mentioning “Spaceballs” so I can remind folks that it is getting a long awaited sequel soon—hope it doesn’t get swept under the rug like “Spinal Tap 2”.
@SP: I know it was just a typo, but I really like “raisin d’etre”. Are they produced from the gripes of wrath?
@SP I’m not sure where this puzzle belongs. Certainly not a Tuesday and it would be a real challenge for a Wednesday. Maybe too difficult. Yet it feels light for a Thursday.
@SP It seems to me that you listed a lot of reasons to like this puzzle. I quite enjoyed it! The theme was clever. It wasn’t terribly difficult once I knew the second of each pair was an anagram. 10 minutes faster than my average but plenty of interesting fill.
@SP Very plain spoken. I felt much the same but have trended toward trying to be more politic and upbeat in my appraisals here. So I appreciate your somewhat more honest criticism. Once the trick became apparent my thought was "oh of course he/she just had to look up the corresponding word after finding an anagram". Which would have been fine but there wasn't much more going on. I still mostly enjoyed it but wasn't Thursday-lighted.
@SP I love a negative-ish review from a seasoned solver and constructor like you 👍🏽. I personally enjoyed the puzzle and thought it was well made. However, your well argued disagreement makes the world a more interesting place and I appreciate it.
@SP ‘And an extra point for mentioning “Spaceballs” so I can remind folks that it is getting a long awaited sequel soon—hope it doesn’t get swept under the rug like “Spinal Tap 2”.’ I was with you entirely up until that very last part. As someone who loved both of those movies (especially This Is Spinal Tap), and absolutely detests Hollywood’s playbook of exhuming the decades-old corpses of well-loved movies to see how much additional cash can possibly be squeezed out of them, I resent the very existence of those sequels and can’t think of a better place for them than under a rug.
@SP I'd deduct points for SHEESH, YOWZAH, and Geez Louise. De Gustibus and all that.
Enjoyed this one. But I agree about "okras." Come on, puzzle editors: kales? Arugulas? Maybe if the clue were about variants (are there different kinds of okra?).
@Nadine, a similar nitpick in today’s Mini! I don’t like the “just add an S to an already-plural word” thing, but I’ve gotten used to it here.
@Nadine I was going to comment on that too.
Very clever and the construction is meticulous. I bet it took a lot of tinkering. What language is "Krippe" this? GERMAN --> MANGER (The only other ones I could think of were Nepali / Alpine, but what decent Nepali would ever call anything "alpine"? And English/Shingle, which would be kinda funny to clue; and Polish / [wypolerowanie] polish, which our buddy from Warsaw may or may not like...) Love that False crosses alarm and the sandwich up there of FARCE ALARM, like when some rube settles in to watch a serious drama and it turns out to be Spaceballs, he might get that rude shock of FARCE ALARM. Which is what happened in reverse when I went on a date to see "Manhattan" thinking it was one of Allen's zany romps. And started laughing uproariously as soon as the film started rolling thinking this was the darndest parody of Bergmanesque romantic agony I had ever seen! I did not end up marrying my date.
Shoot, it wasn't Manhattan, it was Interiors (I get them confused), which I haven't seen since then. It would probably bear rewatching, but doubt I will.
@john ezra It's a bit of a bummer that both Pole and Polish mean something mundane in English, isn't it? A decent Nepali might describe something as Alpine to indicate it's inferior 🤣
@john ezra If you take a look at the constructor notes, you'll find a few more to add to your list of tongue twisters.
I’m definitely more of a YOWZAH than a SHEESH today. Original theme, with bonus points for finding ALOHA in mahalo.
How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? Where was I. Oh yeah - enjoyable puzzle and a typical Thursday workout. Thought it was really clever to make half of each of the pairs a different language. And this was one of those puzzles when catching on to the trick was a huge turning point. Side note: Moved over here to Austell a few years ago, but actually spent most of my time down here in Clarkston, GA which is often referred to as "The Ellis Island of the south," and "The most diverse square mile in America." Just had a lot of experiences of needing a translator to talk to some people. But that was all quite enjoyable. And finally - a puzzle find. A Friday from February 6, 1998 by Wayne Robert Williams. Don't recall another one quite like this. Theme answers: SHESELLSCSHELLS BYTHECSHORE CATTLECHAWK FROMCTOSHININGC Here's that link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=2/6/1998&g=17&d=A" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=2/6/1998&g=17&d=A</a> I'm done. ....
YOWZA! I didn't figure out that there were anagrams until I got to VALIANT, when the V jumped up ans smacked me in the face. SHEESH.
Language in which "shingle" is...
I try not to get hung up on what day what puzzle should run, but I confess to some disappointment in finding this one running as a Thursday puzzle, when I would have been very happy to find it as a Wednesday. Didn't need the anagrams for help in solving, but did see them at the end.
@Vaer - yeah, certainly less tricky than most Thursday gimmicks. One presumes few solvers knew the language translations, but the crosses were all Tuesday level. I took twice as long on yesterday's puzzle which I found a bit tricksy for a Wednesday.
I have the feeling that @Andrzej will do really well with this puzzle. Mostly because he won’t need to figure out the anagrams, he’ll just know the meanings of all the foreign words.
@NYC Traveler Yes, I am well known in many circles as a polyglot. My preternatural mastery of Flemish, Croatian, and Latvian culminated in the musical epic poem "Drosmigs kabanica, zichzelf", considered by many humanity's crowning achievement of lyricism. It earned me the "Pierdolenie o Szopenie" medal, Poland's highest honor for artists. It is the only thing I wear on my body during my annual recitals of this grand opus in Warsaw's Central Square. The crowd is always left in tears.
@Andrzej So tempted to reply with a reference to photos fitting on smartphone displays.
It's a good feeling when you pick up on a theme before you finish, which is rare for me, and helped me get the southwest corner quickly and finish at more than 7 minutes under my average Thursday. This theme might have made a fun Sunday grid... Especially if shingle/ English could have found its way in.
@Tony I think you meant to say, "before you Finnish" 🤣
We need TRICKIER Thursdays. Like we had before. TRICKS nobody ever seen before. New tricks, off the GRID invisible squares tricks. MAKE THURSDAY TRICK AGAIN Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Mu, Again? I'm all for the trickiest of tricks, but Will has always interspersed truly tricky Thursdays with puzzles like these that offer a twist on language if not a trick.
Haven't done many Thursday puzzles, but really enjoyed this one. Lots of "groans" which I confess to loving. I do take issue with one of the clues/answers - even here down south among the (other) knuckleheads, the plural of okra is... okra (not okras.) Nevertheless, had a great time. Thanks.
Finished in 12:03, wasted two additional minutes trying to find the Wordplay column. 🥳 I enjoyed this one. I found the theme interesting, though I basically solved the puzzle without looking to hard at the clues for the highlighted pairs. Instead, I somewhat subliminally noticed that the answer pairs were anagrams of each other, which gave me a decent speed boost!
@Matt * TOO hard Don't you hate it when autocorrect gets it wrong? I hate TO boast TOO much, but I have TWO spelling bee trophies from my youth! 😇
Enjoyed this, though, as others have said, it felt like a clever Wednesday rather than a Thursday. I daresay it’s much harder to construct than to solve, but a few more of the anagrams would have maybe lifted it. My only real gripe is probably a British thing. I had spoof down for Spaceballs, and realised it wasn’t that quite quickly, but then kept inputting then removing FARCE because it didn’t feel like a good fit for Spaceballs. Maybe this is just the battle ground where theatre grads and film grads come to blows, but there’s more to Farce than just silly jokes; it’s a genre in which a whole conceptual escalation leads to ridicule, and Spaceballs is a ridiculous masterpiece but its core comes from, obviously, its distortion of its source material, and not from an original core concept.
@Phil I started with spoof as well 😆
@Phil Well said! I thought FARCE felt funny, but couldn't put my finger on it. Thanks to you, now I know why.
@Phil Spoof, oped vs need and loo vs lav were all wrenches in my morning.
@Phil I started out with SPOOF, too, but it wasn't playing nice with the downs. It's a more obvious choice, I think, but FARCE isn't wrong.
@Phil I was a Radio-TV-Film major during Mel Brooks’ most productive years. I confidently put SPOOF in and held onto it for too long.
This was fun. Not as hard as most Thursdays, and it can be disappointing not to get a rebus, but the theme was clever. I filled in RAINbows before I realized I needed an anagram, which is also what told me that nIl was wrong for [zip]. Come clever cluing. I've heard of SHEA butter, but I wasn't sure of the spelling. (I also have no idea if SHEA is the obscure name of the plant it comes from, or something else.) An eponym, maybe?) Not quite a PB, but well below average. Thanks!
@Jack McCullough Today I Learned that shea butter comes from the nut of the African shea tree. I also learned that it’s edible.
Fantastic theme and well executed, I only wish he had used all the others he had found and made a nice big Sunday out of this!
Loved this brilliant puzzle! I didn’t realize these were anagrams until I was done. And then we get a few more in the constructor notes! Love SHINGLE for English, I’ll be thinking about this one for a while. Truly enjoyable. Thanks.
@JiMPOT I can't work out what TEARS OPEN is - any ideas? I think it ends in ESE. Anagram solvers only give PERSONATE which isn't a language.
Fantastic puzzle! Although, me thinks, we should retire the clue "Actress de Armas" for the foreseeable future.
@Francis How else would you clue those three letters? I mean, we get "Santa ___ winds" a lot too.
@Francis No, don't do that! I've just reached the point where I can remember her name without having to look it up.
@Puzzled Brit 🤣 Today I was 97% sure it wasn't AvA. I'm getting there!
Brilliant! Loved the theme (twisting of the tongues) and the clueing (“made man” was a fun one). Seeing the symmetry and looking at the letter patterns as they got filled in gave me hope that anagrams might be involved. I stumbled with guessing - Laotian and loo. Happy to have picked up a good conversation starter for my next Vanessa. 41 minutes versus an average of 65.
Beautiful puzzle, great work and thank you Sam!
Fun fast puzzle, and yes a little simple for a Thursday. The trick revealed itself quickly (in part because the revealer clue comes so early) and I have to agree with the constructor that the editors' version of linking the clue pairs is much better and more elegant than what he had. I didn't like the clue for IOU at all, far too stretchy even though I got it fairly. Other than that nit, a cute dialectical puzzle. Minimal filler too. Not every Thursday has to be a brain bender...
I found this to be very pleasant and not that tricky. I wasn't exactly sure what "Jeez Louise" meant, and fortunately got the solutions with the crossers, which I wasn't familiar with either. I only know RANCH from the crosswords, never tried it. I think olive oil and balsamic dressing is almost default over here. Anagrams are used a lot in British crosswords. Some involve working out which parts of the multi-part clue need to be used and which parts carry the meaning eg tar can mean a sailor (Jack Tar) as can AB (Able Seaman). For example - Able seaman Brown checked stuff in Scotland = Tartan. If I found it quite easy, I expect this wasn't as challenging as many Thursdays. But no complaints.
@Jane Wheelaghan I always thought it was ABS=able-bodied seaman, and that AB was taken from that.
@Jane Wheelaghan For non-crypticians, the exposition of the answer is.... S P O I L E R Able seaman TAR + Brown TAN = checked stuff in Scotland TARTAN
@Jane Wheelaghan Not plaid stuff in Scotland...
@Jane Wheelaghan Jeez Louise is what you say to express baffled dismay or protest (or both.) I use it a lot
Wowzah!!! Crazy good Thursday challenge, Sam! Play it again anytime.
While not a difficult solve, the clever theme still has me smiling. Ingenious! Anagrams and therefore tongue twisters. Wow!
Personally I found it easier than usual for a Thursday. 😃
I caught on to the theme right away, which is not at all typical for me. Found it clever but much of the cluing seemed too straightforward for Thursday. As I filled in the top half, I kept having thoughts like, ‘[Dressing choice] can’t really be as obvious as RANCH.’ Speaking of languages, while traveling, my husband and I make a point to learn to say yes, no, hello, goodbye, please, thank you, bathroom, wine…the essentials, in the local language. Our Basque guide, Jon, taught us a few words in Basque (Euskara). We found it fascinating that Euskara has absolutely no relationship to any other language. According to Jon, no one knows why. My favorite word, and one that Jon insisted that we shout whenever we like something, is ekaragarria, which roughly translates to awesome.
@Cyndie Euskara is still not as weird as descriptions of cricket in what is supposed to be English. I understand nothing of them, beyond prepositions :D
@Cyndie There have been surprisingly many great athletes of Basque descent, considering what a small population they are. A great hockey player named Sam(?) Etcheverry and an interesting baseballer named Adeiny Echeverria (among my favourite baseball names) among them.
@Andrzej That helps explain why no one likes my cricket themed crossword puzzle concept.
@SBK The Basque last names were hard for us to remember but it seemed like about one in five Basque men we met was named Jon.
@Cyndie ". . . Euskara has absolutely no relationship to any other language. According to Jon, no one knows why." Some Ancient Aliens researchers believe they know. /s
For those who like anagrams, there's a new game at the New Yorker that's anagram-adjacent: <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/puzzles-and-games-dept/shuffalo/2025/11/06" target="_blank">https://www.newyorker.com/puzzles-and-games-dept/shuffalo/2025/11/06</a>
@Steve L Thank you for the link. More brain food.
@Steve L Thanks. It was a bit of fun. It struck me as much more Spelling Bee adjacent.
Fun puzzle. Not as challenging as Thursdays sometimes are, but every day without a rebus is a good day for me.
I did the puzzle, finally! I had to rely upon my Croatian, Flemish and Latvian roots to solve the three-language ones. [NOT! ---just helpful crossings.]
What fun! .... and Sam Brody's list of unused anagrams was a lovely little extra